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Sharing without clicking on news in social media

Author

Listed:
  • S. Shyam Sundar

    (Pennsylvania State University)

  • Eugene Cho Snyder

    (New Jersey Institute of Technology)

  • Mengqi Liao

    (University of Georgia)

  • Junjun Yin

    (Pennsylvania State University)

  • Jinping Wang

    (University of Florida)

  • Guangqing Chi

    (Pennsylvania State University)

Abstract

Social media have enabled laypersons to disseminate, at scale, links to news and public affairs information. Many individuals share such links without first reading the linked information. Here we analysed over 35 million public Facebook posts with uniform resource locators shared between 2017 and 2020, and discovered that such ‘shares without clicks’ (SwoCs) constitute around 75% of forwarded links. Extreme and user-aligned political content received more SwoCs, with partisans engaging in it more than politically neutral users. In addition, analyses with 2,969 false uniform resource locators revealed higher shares and, hence, SwoCs by conservatives (76.94%) than liberals (14.25%), probably because, in our dataset, the vast majority (76–82%) of them originated from conservative news domains. Findings suggest that the virality of political content on social media (including misinformation) is driven by superficial processing of headlines and blurbs rather than systematic processing of core content, which has design implications for promoting deliberate discourse in the online public sphere.

Suggested Citation

  • S. Shyam Sundar & Eugene Cho Snyder & Mengqi Liao & Junjun Yin & Jinping Wang & Guangqing Chi, 2025. "Sharing without clicking on news in social media," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 9(1), pages 156-168, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:nathum:v:9:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1038_s41562-024-02067-4
    DOI: 10.1038/s41562-024-02067-4
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